March 03, 2007

Épater le Bourgeois

"This [notoriety] suited Ibsen: scandalising the bourgeoisie was the best way of becoming a certified Modern."  Martin Puchner reviewing Toril Moi's "Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism" in a recent LRB. Well yes  bourgeois scandalising the bourgeoisie would seem to be the very definition of a model Modern movement. Postmodernism? A project concerned mostly with celebrating the bourgeoisie with faint praise.

2 Comments:

Days of relative innocence back then. Even 'there's nothing more bourgeois than being afraid to look bourgeois'...Since then, well... not much new, a lot of mixing, assembling.Ha! Collage still wins as a process.